Hobbies: Your Best Defense Against Brain Rot

Emily McDonald (0:00)

Neuroscience shows that having a reason for everything that you do is ruining your life. And I will tell you the science behind why. Because if everything you do has a purpose, you work out to optimize your body, you walk to get 10K steps a day, you turn every creative pursuit into a side hustle, or you rest so that you could improve your recovery so that you can perform better tomorrow, your brain has turned your entire life into a task. And that's why you can be doing all of the right things and still not feel happy. So if you're feeling tired or unmotivated, burnt out or uninspired, you don't need another goal. You need hobbies that actually recharge your dopamine system. And in this video, I'm going to explain to you what over-optimizing your brain has done to your life and give you a formula for choosing hobbies that actually recharge you and your dopamine system. And if you're new here, hi, I'm Emily, also known as EmOnThebrain. I am a neuroscientist by training. I've got two degrees in neuroscience as well as many years of research experience in the lab. And I am now a speaker, author, and coach to people in over 55 countries all over the world, training them how to rewire their brain, reprogram their subconscious and build the lives they actually want to live. And that's exactly what I'm here to help you do too. I am very excited about this video because I myself, I have so many goals, I have so many things that I want. I know what I need to do to get them. All I need to do is execute. And yet, for some reason, I was just feeling unmotivated and uninspired and just wasn't feeling like I really wanted to do the work even though I know I wanted to achieve my goals.

And so, I sat back and I thought about what was going on in my brain, did a little bit of research and deep diving, and came to find out that I really needed to do things for no reason again. And I needed to reset my dopamine system the right way so that I could actually be energized and inspired to do the work that I know I needed to do. So if you are sitting in the same situation that I was, where you're just feeling a lack of motivation, you're feeling uninspired or lacking energy to actually go and do the things that you know you need to do, or maybe you're lacking vision, maybe you're not really sure what you want. Maybe you were really good at executing, but you don't know exactly what you want and you don't have this vision for where you wanna go. Or maybe you do, maybe you have all these things and you're just wanting to add a little bit of sparkle, a little bit of spice to your life and enjoy your life a little bit more. This video is for you. So let's first talk about the harm of over-optimizing your life and what this does to your brain. Because nowadays on social media, in society, it's so go, go, go. Especially if you are in the personal development kind of realms or business, et cetera, then you're probably constantly consuming content about how to get better, how to be better, how to get more, how to do more, et cetera, et cetera. And this is great. I mean, it's great to want more and to do more with your life. Like it's absolutely fantastic to want to grow. It's a part of being human. But what happens when we are constantly consuming content? I mean, we're programming our brains with the content that we consume. So for constantly consuming content about those topics, and that's the reality our brains are going to be filtering for.

So what our brains have now done is turned everything into a way to get better or be better, and our entire lives become this task that we need to complete.

I discovered this myself when I went on a hike. So I realized something for me that I really like to do, it's always recharged me, is going for hikes or I love being out in nature, I love being in the mountains, I love the feeling of getting lost. So I went for a hike and I found myself, okay, I'm going on this hike, I'm going to do this hike to knock out my workout, I'm going to replace my workout for today with this hike. And then I only have a few hours to get this hike done because I need to film my podcast or film content after I finish this hike. So I have things I need to do after the hike, so I better get this hike done in this set amount of time. So now there's a time constraint and there's a reason for it, I'm replacing it and I'm getting my cardio, I'm getting my steps in, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm on this hike and I find myself just wondering why I don't feel the magic of the hike that I used to. I'm like, I used to feel this absolute magic, like miracles happening, blessings, sparkles in the air. Like hiking for me has always helped me feel just like alien from outer space, I feel magical. And I was like, I just don't feel that way.